Hotel-Dieu Grace Health Care is once again able to to perform electroconvulsive therapy.
"It's a very old therapy to treat specific types of depressions, really the hardest to treat depressions the catatonia, which means that the patients really aren't eating or drinking or moving. So it can be life saving in those particular circumstances," says Andrea Steen, vice-president of medical affairs
The hospital has not been able to provide the treatment since December 2015 when the practice was stopped because anesthesiologists were not available to help with the procedure.
"It was on hold mostly because of issues around man power. Because we have to work with Windsor Regional and ourselves, it was just getting all the right people in the right place, we just had some difficulties with that," says Steen.
During the time Hotel-Dieu Grace was unable to administer the treatment patients had to travel to Chatham. The therapy is now offered at the facility two times a week.